World's Ugliest Stamp

According to the Durianon.tripod.com webpage, Stories About Famous Stamps,"A tiny scrap of bright-red paper, worth at least a million dollars, is locked away in a Pennsylvania bank vault, and the key has been thrown away. It's one of the world's rarest stamps, the famous Penny Magenta, yet nobody can inspect or buy it."

It goes on to say, "Many feel that is the world's ugliest postage stamp ever issued. It is crudely printed, cut to shape, and heavily canceled."

It then goes on to give a history of the Penny Magenta of British Guiana noting that in 1856 "when a regular shipment of stamps failed to arrive from England, the British Guiana government printers produced provisional issues of one-cent and four-cent stamps, printing them on several papers, including a few on magenta colored paper."

For more on this famous - and not too pretty - stamp, click here.